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Nicola Sturgeon misled the Scottish Parliament about the Alex Salmond crisis, it is understood that a Holyrood investigation concluded after a narrow majority of votes.
A Holyrood special committee ruled, by five votes to four, that Scotland’s prime minister gave an “inaccurate” account of her meetings with Salmond in 2018 during the MSP sworn test earlier this month.
That remarkable conclusion amounts to an accusation that Sturgeon misled parliament, but the committee fell short of ruling that he did so “knowingly.” Knowingly misleading parliament would be a clear violation of the ministerial code and a matter of resignation.
While the MSPs did not accuse Sturgeon of deliberately misleading the committee, her finding will significantly increase pressure on her and the Scottish National Party, just seven weeks before the May elections in Holyrood.
Sturgeon told Sky News late Thursday that he backed all of his evidence before the committee. “What has become clear is that the opposition members of this committee made up their minds before I uttered a single word of evidence. Their public comments have made it clear, ”he said.
“So this same partisan leak tonight before the report is finalized is not that surprising.
“Let’s wait and see the final report, but the most important thing is that the question of whether or not I violated the ministerial code is being considered independently by [former director of public prosecutions in Ireland] James Hamilton and I hope he publishes that report soon. ”
Scottish Conservatives are preparing a no-confidence motion against Sturgeon at Holyrood. Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, said the party would wait to see the final report, which is expected on Tuesday, but added that he already believed he had misled Holyrood and should resign as a result.
“We have called the prime minister on the basis of overwhelming evidence that she misled parliament,” he said. “We will continue to hold her to the same standards as Scotland’s previous prime ministers and demand that she resign.”
In a vote that divided the committee, it found that the prime minister’s evidence of what he told Salmond, his predecessor as leader of the SNP, when they met at his home in April 2018 to discuss the government’s confidential investigation into the allegations of sexual harassment against him, was wrong. .
Sturgeon gave them “an inaccurate account of what happened and has misled the committee on this matter,” the report is expected to say. “This is a possible violation of the ministerial code.”
The report is expected to be released on Tuesday, the day before Holyrood’s dissolution for the May election campaign, after its nine MSPs held a series of meetings Thursday to finalize their findings.
In the critical five-to-four vote late Thursday afternoon, the MSPs are believed to have split along party lines. All four members of the SNP, including committee chair Linda Fabiani, former SNP minister and current Holyrood vice chair, voted against the finding that Sturgeon misled the committee. The five opposition MSPs, two Conservatives, a Labor Party, a Liberal Democrat and an independent MSP, voted in favor of that finding.
The Sturgeon spokesman said Hamilton was separately investigating the question of whether he violated the ministerial code. In a criticism of the committee, he said Hamilton was doing it “independently” and his report was expected to be received and published soon.
Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labor leader, said he would not prejudge the conclusions of the final report, but said: “If you come to the conclusion that the prime minister has misled parliament and potentially violated the ministerial code, then that is incredibly serious.
“It is about the integrity of our Scottish Parliament and upholding standards in public life. Hamilton’s separate investigation has yet to be reported, and all parties must be given due process; however, the code that the prime minister has promised to follow in the letter is clear: any minister who violates the ministerial code has a duty to Resign. “
The investigation was launched after Salmond won a legal challenge to the Scottish government in January 2019 for his internal investigation into allegations of sexual harassment by two female officials.
The government accepted that the investigation was “tainted with apparent bias” and was illegal because it had appointed a personnel officer to lead the investigation despite the fact that she had prior contact with the complainants. Salmond was subsequently awarded £ 512,000 in legal costs; the court ruled that such a large amount was justified because the government had taken months to reveal evidence of such contact to the court.
In March 2020, Salmond was acquitted of 13 counts of sexual assault, including one of attempted rape, by a higher court jury in Edinburgh. Those charges included the alleged assault on the two officials whose cases were at the center of the failed government investigation.
When he testified in the Holyrood investigation on March 3, Sturgeon admitted that the government had made a “terrible and catastrophic” mistake in not seeing that the appointment was a potentially illegal conflict of interest. “Two women failed and the taxpayers’ money was lost,” he said. “I am deeply sorry.”
